Terms of partnership and protection of joint projects

At the stage while the legal entity isn't yet registered, the joint project domain and website are protected as commercial name and as Public Association of project participants.

In case of finding especially interesting (for further development) generic names (of general category), the protection is performed in the form of trade mark registration.

For the selling stage the enterprise is prepared not as a mere idea, but as a full fledged legal mass medium coming under Russian law protection not only as owner of a copyright object, but as the entity entitled to request differentiation and protection of its product by way of trade mark registration.

Thus, it is not the domain but the whole property set which comes under special legal protection.

In many (if not most) cases a domain co-owner is an enterprise or enterprises developing according to the plan and within the project's framework.

Electronic copies of all (or nearly all) projects are saved in special purpose organizations.

The project and public association participants and given respective certificates, shares, other securities entitling them to ownership of the website, project, domain, profit participating right, deposit security rights.

Legal entities with ownership rights to a specific object can be registered in various forms (including joint-stock companies, partnerships, private partnerships) via commission contracts certifying the founder as Trust or managing company, acting on behalf and upon authorization and in the interests of the partners.

We stress the point that our domains have NEVER been put up for sale.

In exceptional cases when to-be owners decide to sell their projects (which sometimes is worthwhile in the days of e-commerce) we keep a good distance from these transactions.

Reverse Domain Hijacking

The project started out when the domain cost was lower, when enterprises were established at own risk, under cash shortages, on high interest loans (so painful for the small business).

A very dangerous tendency of reverse domain name hijacking has become widely practiced lately. Examples of this abound. Even world-known companies (NESTLE, ARMANI) have taken part in such attempts. One should see tricks, forgery and fraudulent practices "lawyers" and "judges" use (often being very same persons who offer their commercial services in reverse domain name hijacking).

Methods of protection

Our protection is the Trade Mark. Our protection is tens of owners. Our protection is owners' security deposit certificates. Our protection is the Collective Insurance Fund specially accumulated for situations like this.

Our projects are protected by professional lawyers, both ones contracted on a long term basis and promising law trainees specially selected for their traineeship time by unique know-how methods.

They have unique experience and qualification in such cases - the ones no one else in Russia can boast.

Especially valuable projects are additionally protected by the fact that people with names identical to the domain titles are attracted on a voluntary basis as honorary co-chairmen. This trend has begun by their own initiatives. This idea has also occurred to us, but been shrugged off as far-fetched and forced. We received phone calls by people looking to getting a sub-domain. Most persistent ones received ownership of their part of the domain name. Now exactly same concept has also been realized in the domain zone .name.

For buying shares and participation in the projects, please, contact us via the CONTACT section.

Trade marks

Since each pleasantly sounding word can be a trade mark, it is out of our authority to argue on how one trade mark can conflict with another.

Of course we run express-checks to see that our partners haven't registered already known trade marks.

Shared resource

In the process of implementing the above strategy, number of participants of some (especially valuable) projects can run into tens.

The core idea is to establish the SHARED Internet, so that a web-site can have more than one single owner, which is exact following of the basic idea of the Internet. This technology and know-how are unique (as far as we know), although we have issued certificates for various service-packages and elements of this know-how to third parties.

For information about our activity visit section ABOUT THE PROJECT.

Shared domains: history and examples of use.

A project offering email addresses in domain name-zone www.freeview.com was launched by company FreeView Listings Ltd in 1996.

The service was further developed by successors www.netidentity.com / www.mailbank.com and later purchased by Tucows, Inc company. Presently it offers sub-domains, URL redirection service and email addresses at more than 40═000 domain names.

Since 2001 domain Helsinki.fi has been shared by the Helsinki city (www.hel.fi) and Helsinki University.

Since 2002 domain ap.com has been under joint use of Associated Press and Audio Precision (ap.com)

Ralph Babel welcomes everyone to take part in the joint use of domain babel.de (babel.de/conditions.html). There are also tens of his other active projects (see the list on babel.de/babel-en.html) operated under motto: " Domain sharing - peaceful coexistence. Domains may well be shared, and be it only by referring to the web pages of people or companies of the same or of a similar name"

Most popular current topic of discussion in academic circles is indoctrination of "shared domain" concept into domain written jus scriptum and law enforcement practice including local acts of such organizations as ICANN and others. The discussion was started off by issue of monograph "School of Law" by Jacqueline Lipton (Professor of the Faculty of Law of Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio). You can review her progressive ideas and credo at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1080313.

Who owns the word?

While the institution of private property and its adjunct - the ideology based on the notion the private property including the supportive legal institutions - were established in the sweaty "property battles" back in the 1970s, in the times of scientific and technological revolution, we entered the new epoch when the main surplus value is formed by innovations.

All superstructures whose operation principles didn't meet the new times' requirements had to be RECONSTRUCTED, or even partly destroyed.

It has become especially obvious from 1980s - 90s since the advent of the Internet.

It is no coincidence that the key symbols of the new technologies - Internet itself (www), Unix (Linux, FeeeBSD), MySQL systems - are free of charge.

They were intended as free and entered into public domain as free.

The related problems - namely the "hackers" problems, attempts to "withhold the property" (virtual property, in fact) using the old "snare and stamp" methods - i.e. problem of social nets and copy-righting - these are the new time's signs and indications.

No doubt that the old folks will keep clinging and fighting for the mechanic past.

We see the old generations of lawyers standing up for the "old generation" companies using their old mechanic stocks. As well as we see the old folks' tools (finances, gloss, high ranks and graft).

The present global crisis is a symptom of this transitional period, because it has come out in the form of the financial crisis - that is related to financial (mechanic) field rather than "intellectual" area (new technologies) of the system.

So, many old time institutions are seemingly absurd and outdated.

But since the first word was God's Word we also started our project without any claims for leadership, but with the intention at least not to go against the new time's trends - free www, free linux, free mysql.

Thus we don't own the Word, it is a public domain.